It is a common belief that the beginning of the split between the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries was marked by the latter's refusal to recognize the Treaty of Brest. In reality, the disagreements began even earlier. Two weeks after the October Revolution, a clash occurred over the closure of several bourgeois newspapers in Petrograd. The training of the Socialist-Revolutionaries let down the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. They turned out to be more democratic than they would have liked and opposed the closures. Democratic values and principles were seen by them as an independent value, possessing not only tactical but also absolute significance. At a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK), the People's Commissar for Agriculture, Koligaev, spoke out against the closure of the newspapers, stating that his party does not view the issue of press freedom as a petty-bourgeois prejudice. Trotsky and Lenin opposed this, accusing the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries of ceasing to be socialists. A Bolshevik resolution passed by a margin of ten votes. Making a statement that the resolution on the press was a vivid and definite expression of a system of political terror and incitement of civil war, Proshyan called on all People's Commissars—Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to resign. The scandal was quelled at that time.
Another conflict occurred in December 1917, when the Bolsheviks issued a decree declaring the Cadet Party illegal. Proshyan again addressed the VTsIK in protest, wondering how it was possible to arrest deputies of the Constituent Assembly, who enjoyed immunity, and to ban a party without any accusations against it. But the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were once again criticized for their insufficient revolutionary spirit, which they endured again.
The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries received another portion of criticism from Lenin when they opposed the official restoration of the death penalty.
In early 1918, they insisted on condemning the sailors who had independently killed two former ministers of the Provisional Government—Kokoshin and Shingarev—in a hospital, but the trial never took place.
These concessions, which the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries made in bits and pieces "in the name of the revolution," led to the situation by the summer of 1918 where the Bolshevik Party was no longer bound by any coalition, laws, democracy, or public opinion.
In July 1918, the Left Socialist-Revolutionary uprising was suppressed in Moscow. The ruling coalition of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks collapsed, unable to withstand the test of principle. The Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party was banned, and its leaders were arrested and sentenced.
This was the "swan song" of Russian populism as a revolutionary movement. The Bolsheviks achieved autocracy, which they had methodically and persistently pursued. Now, many new studies have been written about this uprising, shedding light on this tragedy from various perspectives. Some of them present irrefutable facts indicating that the uprising was initially and consciously provoked by the Bolsheviks, who began to grow weary of their restless and principled revolutionary comrades. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were also complicit in the actions of the Bolshevik Party. However, at least they had the courage to oppose the blatant injustices of the system being created. From the summer of 1918, the party was relentlessly attacked, and by 1922 it was completely eradicated through executions, imprisonments, and exiles. Since then, it was considered "self-dissolved."
Formation of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (SRs)
